


Barkefact Storage

by lamella



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Pre-S1, and jon's foot falls asleep, its soft and the worst thing that happens is theres a stray puppy, its. preslash but Definitely Crush Stuff, therefore s1 levels of Jon rudeness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 02:02:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19843258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamella/pseuds/lamella
Summary: It's the kind of situation you never really mean to happen.Aka Martin smuggles a puppy into the Archives in defiance of his boss and critical reasoning skills





	Barkefact Storage

It’s not like he _plans_ it, or anything. He’s just walking the last little bit to the Institute when he hears it. The noise isn’t loud, but it’s one of those sounds that’s difficult to ignore, like a baby crying.

It is a crying baby, in a way.

The puppy is probably a couple of weeks old, already. It’s lost the look that Martin has always privately thought of as velvet potato, but its eyes have a little bit of that baby blueness and it’s got that toddling clumsiness of something that hasn’t quite learned how all its limbs move.

Martin grabs it before thinking about things like fleas and lice, but now he’s holding a crying, shaking puppy, so he isn’t about to put it down. The puppy huddles against his chest where he’s holding it. It’s so small he can support it with only one hand under its belly, but he makes a little pocket for it against his chest with his sweater. Martin takes maybe half an hour to search for the puppy’s mother or any signs of where she went.

He can’t find any other dogs, adult or otherwise, before he realizes he’s going to be late. Normally, that wouldn’t be a major issue, since given the kind of things the Institute studies (and, yes, the way they conduct some of the practical research) you wind up with a fair amount of individuals that wind up staying up much too late and sleep past their alarms on a regular basis.

But he’s supposed to be at the archives, where punctuality is important because they’re moving a new archival team in after poor Gertrude passed, and they need all hands available to set up new computers and move things in and out and around as needed.

Martin is currently 7 minutes late. If he runs, he can get there in 4 minutes. If he stops, goes to an animal shelter, turns over the puppy, does any associated paperwork, and then goes back to the Institute, it will probably take over an hour.

He likes his job and sort of wants to keep it. He also wants to make a good impression on his boss, professionally and otherwise.

“Well, you can be quiet, right?” he says, looking at the little lump wriggling against his belly.

Rosie takes no effort to get past since she’s busy trying to calm down someone who’s off on a tirade about artifact storage’s safety and security regulations. Martin barely merits a tight smile while he walks by. He doubts she notices he’s carrying something, much less something more unusual than a bag lunch.

Nobody passes him in the halls on the way to the Archives, but when he gets there, Sasha is on him even before he steps through the door, hissing at him about punctuality and Jon’s temper. Maybe three seconds pass before she notices the puppy, but when she does, she goes quiet.

“Martin,” Sasha asks, standing very, very still. “What are you hiding under your jacket?”

“It’s, um, a puppy?” Martin whispers, and glances at the others to make sure nobody is watching. They’re not. Tim is moving piles of boxes off of desks and Jon is on his laptop, sitting against the wall because all the chairs are covered with mountains of loose files, scowling at some filing system or another. He carefully reveals the puppy, its little soft face and the tiny fat rolls and oversized head. Sasha, since she’s a reasonable human being, melts a little at the sight. “I couldn’t find it’s mother, and I was running late, so I just. Brought it here. I know, bad idea, but I couldn’t just leave it!”

“We’re going to have to keep Jon from noticing. Tim’s fine, though, I doubt he’d make a stink about it.”

“I- what?”

“Well, you’re right, leaving it alone isn’t an option. We’ll just have to take care of it for today.” Sasha shrugs, and adds, “I’ll go do a little bit of research on puppy care. Here, give it here. You go do something Jon would find productive.”

He hands off the puppy carefully, it’s little body squirming a bit in the transfer from him to Sasha. The soft, anxious noises it makes tug at his heartstrings, but Sasha needs to be able to see the puppy to learn more about it and the wifi in the archives is spotty at best. Plus, it’ll be easier to hide the puppy if he’s not awkward and evasive the whole time.

Unfortunately for Martin, Jon notices as soon as he steps inside the Archives.

“Martin.”

“Hi, Jon.”

“You’re late.” Jon’s tone is cutting, and he’s got the sour look on his face that means he’s actually frustrated and not just baseline levels of crabby. Normally Martin would feel worse about it, but he’s got a decent reason for being this late.

“Yeah, sorry, I got, uh, I got caught up in something. Won’t happen again.”

“Hm.”

After Jon’s eyes flick back to the laptop, and he starts punching away at the keys like they’ve personally offended him, Martin figures it’s safe to go over to Tim. He’s still moving boxes- there’s dozens of them, all in an unwieldy size that makes it difficult to carry more than one at a time. He picks up a box, too, starts moving them into the corner where they seem to be accumulating.

For a few minutes, Tim chats with him a bit, and they just move boxes. Sasha comes back around 5 minutes after she left, carrying another box. It feels like his spine is winding up like one of those little clockwork toys, but the tension just grows and grows. Jon, absorbed as he is in cursing the filing system, does not notice the box has a puppy in it.

When Sasha places the box in one of the spots on the table they’d cleared, Tim gapes. He takes in a breath to says something, and Sasha slashes her hand through the air in a back-and-forth arc in front of her neck, shaking her head while Martin sticks a finger in front of his mouth and hisses, “Shhh!”

One of the gestures must sink in, because instead of speaking, Tim whips out his phone and pulls up the notes app.

**Puppy????**

Sasha nods and holds her hand out for the phone.

**5-6wk old female. martin found her thats why he was late**

Tim sort of shrugs and looks into the box. It’s lined with newspapers and then paper towel, and the puppy is flopped out on her side along one edge. There’s a little bowl of water and a bowl of pet food. Martin points to the food and makes a dramatic confused face at Sasha, who rolls her eyes with just as much flair.

**One of the upstairs receptionists feeds stray cats n soggy cat food is good enough for one day**

There’s a shuffling noise from Jon’s direction, and Martin suddenly realized that their sudden silence is sort of suspicious, so he launches into a ramble about what they might do for lunch, something about how there’s nice spots nearby but they also could just eat in the break room if they get takeaway. Exactly the kind of conversation that Jon tunes out, if he’s being honest.

Turns out Jon tunes out much more than that. It’s almost amazing how unobservant he is, for a researcher and academic, considering it takes him almost four hours of the puppy sitting there, in a box on the table, with one of them checking on it every few minutes, to realize that there is an animal in the archives.

He'd left for the restroom, with a weird staggery walk from pins and needles caused by sitting on one foot for too long, and when he came back he finally noticed the box, now alone on one of two clear tables.

“What is that?” He walks over and looks into the box. “Is that a dog?”

Jon turns around to look at all of them, absolutely outraged. “Who brought a _dog_ into the _archives_?”

“Um… me.” Martin’s hand goes to the back of his neck, and he can’t meet Jon’s eyes so he stares at a little stain on his shirt somewhere around his midsection. “I found her on my way over, and I couldn’t just leave her, she’s just a puppy, and I didn’t have the time to go to a shelter so… there’s a dog in the archives, I suppose.”

Jon looks back and forth between Martin and the box a few times, brow furrowing even deeper until he closes his eyes in a look of resigned frustration. “Fine. Fine, there’s a dog in the archives, but it leaves as soon as your shift is over and _this does not happen again_ , Martin. Just- text, or something, next time.”

“Wait, really? I mean, thank you. Yes, I’ll bring her to a shelter first chance I get, thank you, for not, not yelling at me.”

Jon looks at the puppy and his face softens just a tiny bit. “Well, the harm’s already done.”

He hesitates for a second before going back to his work. “Is it… alright, for it to be in a box all day? Maybe we should let it out, as long as we keep it away from any documents. If there’s going to be a dog in the archives either way I certainly don't want to get in trouble for mistreating it, as well.”

Tim grins at Jon. “Aw, you couldn’t resist that chubby little face either, huh?”

“Shut up.”

They do let her out of the box, after making a pen out of empty boxes (each weighed down with a small stack of discredited documents, which Jon had deemed unimportant enough to risk) and putting down newspapers to avoid any messy cleanup. She mostly sleeps, lying on Martin’s donated sweater. It’s adorable, and naturally, a majority of the conversation winds up centered on her.

“Spot. Fido. Buddy. Patches. Snowball.”

“Snowball? Come on, Tim, she’s not even white.”

“Rover. Lucky. Lady. Lassie. Princess. Rex. Crap, I can’t think of any more.”

Sasha scoffs. “Good. What about something thematic, though. She wound up in the archives, how about Dewey, or something?”

“Oh, god, that name doesn’t suit at all.” Martin shudders. “Why not just name her after someone? I dunno, Shelley, Bronte, Keats, Sylvia, something like that.”

“Martin, you nerd!” Tim sounds overjoyed. “Those are all famous poets, yeah?”

“I mean, yeah- wait, you recognized them!”

Martin startles at Jon’s voice. “I actually do like the name Keats,” he says, still looking for all the world like he’s transcribing documents into a digital file. “If you’re going to name the dog after a poet.”

Sasha shrugs, and replies, “Keats it is, I guess.”

Keats rolls over and continues her nap.

They do wind up getting takeaway for a late lunch, and they gather around Keats’ little pen while they eat. Even Jon, who claims to dislike dogs, has his noodles while standing next to Martin and watching her. It’s boring, but watching her little chest rise and fall settles something in Martin.

“Is one of us going to keep her?” Tim sounds hopeful. “I wish I could, but I don’t have the time for a puppy.”

“None of us do, to be honest,” Sasha says. “We’re all gone most of the day, plus we’re off all over the place to follow up on statements. Wouldn’t be very good for a puppy.”

“Yeah, I mean, I’m just going to take her to a shelter and… hope for the best.” Martin would keep her, really, but it’s not what would be good for Keats. “At least we got to name her?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

When they’re done for the day, Martin manages to find himself the last of the assistants actually in the archives, which is a little surprising due Jon’s insistence that the dog leaves as soon as possible. He suspects that Keats has grown on Jon quite a bit since he first noticed her.

When he’s all set to leave, Keats’ pen all tidied up and the soiled newspapers thrown away, the dog herself carried carefully in the sweater, he heads for the door. Jon clears his throat, and Martin pauses.

“Next time, if you’re going to bring in some stray animal, bring in a kitten.” Jon smiles for just a moment, a little sharp uptick on one corner of his mouth before it settles into a straight line again. Something warm and soft settles in Martin’s chest.

“Right. See you tomorrow, Jon.”

"Bye, Martin. Travel safe."

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry guys Keats was fine her mom and siblings were picked up the night prior to martin finding her and she got missed in the dark. She wound up getting adopted by a nice older lady who spoils her absolutely rotten
> 
> Lbr jon would have shamelessly ended up with a cat if martin had brought in a kitten
> 
> come bug me @lamellas on tumblr!


End file.
